TidBytes for the New Year

Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D.

The National Psychologist

January/February 2001


For this issue, I have dug into the file folder where I keep short items for your attention. Here are a few helpful ones.

Reference Sites:


Accessories You MUST buy in the Next Year:

If you don't already have one, it is time to buy a flatbed scanner. You can get a good one now (600 x 1200 dpi or dots per inch) for under $100. It works like a copier for pictures and can also take a sheet of printed information, decode it into letters and words and turn it into a word processor document. I have had good luck with Hewlett-Packard, Microtek and Agfa scanners.

Storage costs have shrunk to nothing. You can go several routes to get more storage that are determined by which port you would be using on your PC. I got a 25-gigabyte hard drive that sits behind my computer that cost under $200! My external hard drive connects through my USB port (you will know that you have one on your computer either by the label (looks like a psi) or by the port itself which is rectangular and about ¼ inch wide and ½ inch long. Other choices exist. Visit www.zdnet and look up reviews and www.simon.com for pricing.

You really should make sure that your computer has a few USB ports. Many of the devices that are here and others down the road connect easily though a USB port. If you plug in a device in a USB and then boot up your computer, the computer recognizes the device and finds the information it needs to make it work. That information is usually found on a disk that the manufacturer supplies. To turn your USB port into several, try a Belkin 4 port hub. This connects to my single USB port and gives me 4 ports for my digital camera, hard drive, scanner and Handpring Visor sync cradle.

For Fun

VirtualTuner.com is a directory of thousands of radio stations around the world. If you don't already have RealPlayer and Windows Media Player (both free), you will need to download them to hear the streaming audio, but it is worth it. In the old days (about 3-5 years ago) you had to download an audio program and then play it. Now, with streaming media, your computer downloads some and starts to play while continuing to download more in the background.

At EarthCam (www.earthcam.com) you click on one of thousands of links and you are whisked away to visit (pictorially) a place that is being photographed by a camera. These photos change every 10-30 seconds so you can get quite a show

More Fun

Top 10 reasons you are way too involved with technology:

  1. You wake up at 3 a.m. to got to the bathroom and stop to check you e-mail on the way back to bed.
  2. You get a tattoo that reads "This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher."
  3. You decide to stay in college for an extra year or two for the free Internet access.
  4. You start using smileys in your handwritten letters.
  5. You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com
  6. You start introducing yourself as JohnDoe at AOL dot com.
  7. You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
  8. All of your friends have an @ in their names.
  9. You can't your mother because she doesn't have a modem.
  10. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.


Another funny: Bill Gates has compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with the pace of the computer industry, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles per gallon." General Motors responded:

  1. Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?


Internet users added their own:

  1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
  2. Occasionally, your car would die for no reason and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
  3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to reinstall the engine.
  4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought Car2000 or CarNT. But, then you would have to buy more seats.
  5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5 percent of the roads.
  6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
  7. The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.
  8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size rear end.
  9. The airbag system would say, "are you sure" before going off.



Just when you thought the holidays were finished … Christmas Carols for the Psychiatrically Challenged:

SCHNIZOPHRENIA: Do you Hear What I Hear?

NARCISSISTIC: Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

MANIC: Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Busses and Trucks and Trees and …

PARANOID: Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

PERSONALITY DISORDER: You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER: Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock …

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONILTY: On the First Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me (and then took it all away).

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

Hope you had a wonderful holiday.

Copyright, 2000, The National Psychologist. Reprinted with permission. The National Psychologist is a privately-owned bimonthly newspaper which may be purchased for $30 a year. Write or call: TNP, 6100 Channingway Blvd., Suite 303, Columbus, OH 43232; telephone: 614.861.1999 or fax with Visa or MC to 614.861.1996.